Bee Tree Mine

Bee Tree Mine is a southern West Virginia operation in Coal River Mountain owned by Massey Energy. It is the site where environmentalists had hoped to put a wind energy facility. Instead, Massey made it a mountaintop removal job, and began blasting there in October 2009.

In November 2009, after urging by activists including Coal River Mountain Watch, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials began investigating the Bee Tree site and Massey’s operation there without first obtaining a “dredge-and-fill” permit under Section 404 of the federal Clean Water Act. Massey had made a change in its surface mining permit from the state that the company believed allowed it to not need a 404 permit. Massey had applied for a 404 permit, but then withdrew that application.

Residents concerned blasting at mine could destabilize coal slurry dam
On July 5, 2011, Coal River Mountain Watch and the Sludge Safety Project will gather supporters outside the federal Office of Surface Mining office in Charleston. Chief among their concerns is a planned permit renewal and proposed blasting for the Bee Tree Mine, which they fear could destabilize the nearby 7 billion-gallon Brushy Fork coal sludge impoundment. Residents note the dam was built by the same engineers behind the Martin County, Kentucky dam, which failed and released some 300 million gallons of coal slurry, creating a flood as wide as a football field and 6 feet deep.

Regulators ordered stability tests on the 7 billion-gallon Brushy Fork coal sludge impoundment in response to residents' concerns. Officials with the state Department of Environmental Protection and the federal Office of Surface Mining and Reclamation Enforcement said mining laws require them to assume a citizen complaint has merit, while it is up to the state to determine if the threats of failure and flooding are real. Harold Ward, also of the DEP's mining division, said state inspectors who visit the Brushy Fork impoundment have found nothing to suggest a defect, but that the DEP is working with engineers and Alpha Natural Resources to devise a testing plan to prove it is safe. OSM cited Alpha subsidiary Marfork Coal Co. on May 26, 2011, "for failure to prevent liquification and provide safeguards against the development of this condition."

The dam above Marsh Fork Elementary School has a capacity of more than 8 billion gallons. Emergency response documents say that if it failed, the resulting flood would hit Pettus in just 12 minutes and the communities of Whitesville, Seng Creek and Sylvester within 36 minutes. It would travel through Orgas and Coopertown in the first 90 minutes to Fosterville, Prenter, Comfort and Bloomingrose. In about three hours, it would hit Racine and Peytona.

Related SourceWatch articles
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